10 MAR 2017 by ideonexus
The Need for Science-Based Organization
Some time shortly after the invention of the graphical Internet, it became ripely apparent that humanity was fucking itself with its own technology and was on the fast path toward societal morbidity. We maximized energy extraction without perfecting clean use, accelerated manufacturing technologies and global supply chains without developing socioeconomic models to cope with the disruptions, and modified life itself without having any perspective on what modifications would actually, in the ... 1 
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notes15 NOV 2013 by ideonexus
The Internet as a Brain
The brain is one of the most complex networks in the world, with more neurons than there are stars in the galaxy. Its hardware is a complex network of neurons; its software a complex network of memories. And so too is the Internet a network. Its hardware is a complex network of computers; its software a complex network of websites. There is a lot we can learn from the brain and it can tell us where the Internet is headed next.
[...]
In practice, the Internet is clunkier, slower, and smaller...
1 The question for me is: How do you detect the intelligence? If we are only interacting with neurons, how to we see the big picture?
29 JUN 2013 by ideonexus
The Hypersociality of Collectible Card Games
Yu-Gi-Oh! demonstrates how pervasive media technologies in everyday settings
integrate the imagination into a wider range of sites of social activity.
Far from the shut-in behavior that gave rise to the most familiar forms of antimedia
rhetoric, this media mix of children’s popular culture is wired, extroverted,
and hypersocial, reflecting forms of sociality augmented by dense sets
of technologies, signifiers, and systems of exchange. David Buckingham and
Julian Sefton-Green (2004) have arg...CCGs are a very social game, involving not just game play but trading, bargaining, getting out to find cards, etc.
23 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
Internet as Social Amplifier
Electronic communication and social networking enable Tea Partiers, global warming deniers, and conspiracy theorists to isolate themselves and find support for their shared ideas and suspicions. As the Internet connects the like-minded and pools their ideas, White supremacists may become more racist, Obama-despisers more hostile, and militia members more terror prone (thus limiting our power to halt terrorism by conquering a place). In the echo chambers of virtual worlds, as in real worlds, s... 1 notes
notesSocial networking allows conspiracy theorists to insulate themselves in tribes of like-mindedness.
04 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
The Difference Between the Internet and the World Wide Web
It seems that most people, even intelligent and well-informed people, are confused about the difference between the Internet and the Web. No one has expressed this misunderstanding more clearly than Tom Wolfe in Hooking Up:
I hate to be the one who brings this news to the tribe, to the magic Digikingdom, but the simple truth is that the Web, the Internet, does one thing. It speeds up the retrieval and dissemination of information, partially eliminating such chores as going outdoors to the mai... 1 notes
notesHillis notes that people equate the www with the internet, failing to realize they are actually very different things, with www being just one thing out of many running on the internet. He compares it to people equating electricity with electric lights, and failing to realize all the other applications the invention makes possible.
